THE CRISIS LEADS TO WAR

A month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the crisis
developed with lightning speed. On July 23 Austria-Hungary presented
Serbia with an ultimatum designed to be rejected. The ultimatum required
the government of Serbia to take such humiliating steps as dismissing
military and civilian officials to be named by Austria-Hungary. At the same
time, officials of the Austro-Hungarian government were to be allowed to
participate in Serbia's investigation of the plot to murder the archduke. The
inevitable rejection was Austria's excuse to attack Serbia five days later.
Russia's support for the Serbs took the form of a military mobihzation along
its entire western frontier. In short order, Germany responded with a
declaration of war against Russia on August 1 , then against France, Russia's
ally, two days later. When Germany implemented its long-standing war plan
and invaded France through Belgium on August 4, Britain immediately
joined France and Russia.
When this momentous crisis arrived, a mixture of European crowned
heads, civilian leaders, and military commanders moved to meet it. In
Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm played an active role in the decision to support
Austria's ultimatum to Serbia. Thereafter Prime Minister Bethmann Hollweg
and General Helmuth von Moltke took the lead, and the kaiser merely
ratified the decision to go to war. In the other great monarchies of the
timeŚAustria-Hungary, Russia, and Great BritainŚmonarchs had a lesser
role. In Austria-Hungary, Foreign Minister Count Leopold von Berchthold
took command and decided on war. In Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei
Sazonov set the country's policy and persuaded a hesitant Tsar Nicholas II
to follow. In Vienna and St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in late August
1914), as in Berlin, the generals commanding their countries' armiesŚConrad
von Hotzendorf, Nikolai Yanushkevich, and von MoltkeŚpressed for
national mobilization and, in so doing, brought each country measurably
closer to a declaration of hostilities. By contrast, in Britain, with military
leaders far from the inner circle of power, the civilians in the cabinet, Prime
Minister H. H. Asquith and his colleagues, decided the issue. King George
V ratified their decision. In the hostilities now beginning, monarchs would
fade even further into the background, and, in most of the belligerent states,
generals and statesmen would wrestle for control of the war effort.˝ŕÓ¸Ó˛Ř dle 12.1